In many cases, the end of the year gives you time to step back and take stock of the last 12 months. This is when many of us take a hard look at what worked and what did not, complete performance reviews, and formulate plans for the coming year. For me, it is all of those things plus a time when I u...

DERRY, NH -- (Marketwire) -- 02/27/13 -- Forty years ago, MegaFood was founded on a fresh idea that dietary supplements could be made from farm fresh whole foods. Today, the company has continued to pioneer the whole food supplement movement by launching more than 50 varieties of whole food supplements designed for men, women and children.

"The biggest risk we took was building our own plant, which involved investing in a low-temperature, food-drying technology that allowed us to effectively deliver the whole food supplements," says Carl E. Jackson, former owner and president of MegaFood. "Initially it was not a popular decision. There was a lot of eye rolling because it was far more expensive than we anticipated, but I knew it was the right thing to do long term to deliver uncompromising quality whole food supplements."

The food-drying technology partnered with intel from researchers at the University of New Hampshire is what MegaFood now coins as its Slo-Food Process. The unique technology is a gentler way to make whole food supplements, optimizing the potency and bioavailability while staying true to the intention of whole foods.

Another part of MegaFood's legacy built by Jackson is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art analytical lab enabling the company to test all raw materials and finished products to ensure potency and purity are met.

"The more you can test your products, the better off you are," says Jackson. "It was another expensive idea but the payback is in knowing, without a doubt, that you can tell your customers it is done right."

Flashing forward to 2013, MegaFood has many more fresh milestones in the works. Now under new leadership of CEO, Robert U. Craven, the company has begun building a unique partnership with Dr. Andrew Weil to bring science-based educational programs and products to natural products retailers and their customers.

"MegaFood has a legacy of taking the road less traveled and we will continue to break the mold as we move forward," says Craven. "Carl Jackson always said it's going to be expensive, it's going to be tough but if you stick with it and have faith, you'll find it's the right thing to do. That dedication and vision at MegaFood holds true to this day."

MegaFood will host its 40th birthday bash during Natural Products Expo West for conference attendees on Sat., March 9, at booth 1256. Attendees will journey back in time by visiting a psychedelic photo shoot capturing the best and worst of 70s fashion, with instant uploads to Facebook and Twitter. Retailers will have a chance to win a Kindle Fire or the grand prize all-expenses-paid trip to Dr. Tieraona Low Dog's Herbal Intensive Course. The birthday celebration will start in the morning from 10-11 a.m.; DJ Carmin Wong will be mixing a progressive 70s set from 1-3 p.m.; and Dr. Low Dog will be making a guest appearance at 4 p.m. For more visit: www.megafood.com.

"We started a Master of Science in business analytics - that's the hot topic. We serve the business community around San Francisco so we educate the working professionals and this is where they all want to be," explained Judy Lee, Associate Professor and Department Chair at Golden Gate...

There is a huge demand for responsive, real-time mobile and web experiences, but current architectural patterns do not easily accommodate applications that respond to events in real time. Common solutions using message queues or HTTP long-polling quickly lead to resiliency, scalability...

We call it DevOps but much of the time there’s a lot more discussion about the needs and concerns of developers than there is about other groups. There’s a focus on improved and less isolated developer workflows. There are many discussions around collaboration, continuous integration a...

The dynamic nature of the cloud means that change is a constant when it comes to modern cloud-based infrastructure. Delivering modern applications to end users, therefore, is a constantly shifting challenge. Delivery automation helps IT Ops teams ensure that apps are providing an optim...

Modern software design has fundamentally changed how we manage applications, causing many to turn to containers as the new virtual machine for resource management. As container adoption grows beyond stateless applications to stateful workloads, the need for persistent storage is founda...

"CA has been doing a lot of things in the area of DevOps. Now we have a complete set of tool sets in order to enable customers to go all the way from planning to development to testing down to release into the operations," explained Aruna Ravichandran, Vice President of Global Marketin...